The Role of Consulting in L&D

00:00-Introduction to L&D Consulting

Nolan: Hello everyone and welcome to the Learning and Development Podcast sponsored by Infopro Learning. As always, I’m your host, Nolan Hout. Joining me on the podcast today is James Gilchrist, who is the Director at Lighthouse L&D Consulting. James might have one of the most diverse backgrounds of any of our guests on the podcast. Today, we’re going to talk about all things L&D consulting and consulting in general.

As a consultant himself, James will touch on just about everything that you would ever want to know about improving your consultancy jobs. And let’s face it, consulting is a large part of all of our jobs, whether it’s in our title or not. So, let’s get right into it and meet our guest. Hello, James, welcome to the podcast.

James: Hi Nolan, thanks for having me.

03:05-James Gilchrist’s Unique Journey

Nolan: Yeah, pleasure. We have a really interesting topic that you and I are both really excited to talk about today, which is the role of consulting in L&D. But before we do that, James, what we ask all of our guests is to understand what your origin story is in learning and development. That is the most interesting thing that we have found. I don’t know if I’ve met or had somebody on the podcast who was like, I went to college to be an instructional designer, and then I was an instructional designer and then a manager. Everybody has such a unique path. I’d love to hear what yours is.

James: Thanks for asking. And that’s a loaded question only because I tend to be a storyteller at heart. I will try to keep my arms around that and answer it in a way that makes sense. So, I’ll just say that I did not go to school to study business. I did not go to school to study anything related to instructional design. The closest thing in my educational background that ties to instructional design and learning design is journalism. I was majoring in music and journalism when I graduated from my undergrad. And my path led me nowhere near the area that I’ve been in now for the last 20 years. I was living in New York City. I was doing stage acting and starting as many indie bands that I could play in as possible.

That was my current situation, and I was thoroughly enjoying myself. And then there came a day, as so often happens in the life of any struggling artist, where I knew I needed to get a little more money coming in than was coming in. And I wound up getting hired to work at, of all places, a payroll company. So, I went through a two-week training process where I was simultaneously learning everything they could shove at me about payroll accounting and how to use their online system so that I could help their customers do payroll.

It was a small business and way outside my comfort zone in my wheelhouse. The one thing I will say is that there was something about that process that kept giving me ideas about how perhaps it could have been done better, how I would have learned better. I am like, I’m not satisfied if I’m not doing well at my job. So, I came out of the training course and I felt like I spent, after every phone call, practically, I was in my now manager’s office asking a question that had it been addressed in training, it would have saved her from tearing her hair out as she managed me.

Fast forward four months and there’s a job posting for a training manager at this company. Previously, this task had been the responsibility of individual managers—myself included—rather than someone whose role was specifically dedicated to it. I walked into the HR department; there was one person. She set up an appointment. I walked into her office, sat down and explained how I would like to be considered for this job. And honestly, I can’t tell you why they chose to give it to me because I certainly wasn’t a subject matter expert.

But I had, in that short period of time, come up with a long list of ideas for how to make the training process more effective that apparently was of interest to her. So, she gave me a shot and that was it. That was literally the beginning of my career in L&D. I was a training manager and a facilitator, and I was standing up in a classroom for two weeks at a stretch with people new to the company and trying to help them figure out how to become good at the job.

Nolan: I have the first obvious question: what instrument did you play?

James: I am a guitarist. I played electric and acoustic guitar. I write my own music, and I sing. And my wife and I are actually like our whole, our entire relationship has revolved around our performing music together.

Nolan: So that’s the whole, that’s great. Very cool. Very well, what genre?

James: Thank you. I came up listening to everyone from the Indigo Girls to Melissa Etheridge and Billy Idol and, like just really aggressive thought and motion-provoking rock in the nineties, like late eighties and early nineties. That was my role. So, it was always about the message and the energy for me.

05:52-The Role of Consulting in L&D

Nolan: Coming back to the more serious side, there’s a very common path that I’ve noticed with people in L&D; Lisa Willis is the one that comes to mind. She’s a gold medal Olympian for USA Women’s Basketball. She was the first female coach in the whole NBA NEXT organization. Amazing, accomplished business lady. And she said, I got into the training world because when my coaches were coaching me, they were coaching me. I thought, I was like, man, you’re not saying what you have to say to get me involved. I felt like they’re doing such a bad job of this that I almost had to take it on myself to do a better job of it and to say, like, I wish I had that coach. Why don’t I be that coach that I wish I had?

And it is something that I have heard. There’s another gentleman who started as a, he was the CLO of a restaurant brand, not restaurant brands international, but of some restaurant brands. And he was saying, when I got hired as a waiter. I just didn’t know how to do anything and there was no training. So, I started creating programs for people underneath me. The individual who had onboarded individuals then expressed, “Oh, I really enjoyed that.”

Let’s have him have that job. When it came open, I just kind of climbed my way to the top just because I wasn’t in my job, but I just almost couldn’t stand having others have to go through what I went through. That’s a really fascinating arc.

James: I resonate with that a lot. I mentioned in my story that was the pain point that stuck with me. My first job was a busboy at a catering place. I’ll never forget. I had only been on the job for like three days. And I was so struck by the fact that the process whereby the waitstaff would carry the glasses into the kitchen on their shoulders, having to navigate through lots of rooms and people only to then stand underneath the dishwasher rack. I can’t believe I’m telling this story. Stand beneath the dishwasher rack and have to manually place the glasses into the individual rack and glass- type-specific containers. And everyone who had also brought in glasses was like standing around behind them, waiting for their turn to do this very laborious process.

And I thought, this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. People are going to drop stuff, and my arm is killing me. What can I do? So, I loaded up a cart with three of each of the various types of wine glasses and shot glasses, etc. I brought them into this hallway that was behind one of the banquet rooms that the waiters could go in and out of and be unseen. And I set them all up on tables.

And I said, “Hey, guys, you only need to bring your glasses from the room to the hallway, load them into the glassware, and then someone else can carry them back and place them directly in the dishwasher.” And this was like, I said, my very first job, three days on the job. And that’s what I decided to do. And I was almost immediately fired.

Nolan: So yeah, I mean, I did the same thing. I was at this job for two months. The company went bankrupt probably because of me. I came right out, and I said, well, the way that you’re doing this. I told the CEO I was up- and-coming because I was really good at my job. And all I did was explain to this person how to run his business better. I think I was right.

08:36-Defining Consulting in Learning and Development

Nolan: Interesting and a good segue into our topic today, which is consulting and the role of consulting in L&D, which you almost can drop the L&D. I think consulting is ubiquitous and if you do it well, you can apply it to solve any number of problems, from dishware to anything else to training. Before we get into it, and again, we’re going to talk about a couple of different things within consulting and learning and development. I just want to start with how we define consulting in learning & development. What is it? What would you say it?

James: Well, I think it’s important to start by asking yourself as an L&D specialist when you’re trained to do that job, and you have a modality that you’re following. There are obviously a lot of aspects to the job that are bordering or bumping right up against what I think of as consulting’s primary function. So, sometimes you might not even realize that you could be doing more from a consultative approach than you are, because it might feel like you’re already doing it. But I just answered a question today from someone who was curious about getting into L&D and sort of what it was about and said that I think the best tip that I can give to anyone who’s getting into the field is to remember the added trust but verify; it applies to so many things. You must remember that.

At least in our current world, you aren’t going to a machine to find out what the problem is you’re trying to solve. You’re going to people and those people may or may not be directly attached to the place where the problem seems to be; they may be far removed from it. And if you’re lucky, they may have brought someone in as a resource that is closer to it, but the conversations begin with them telling you, well, here’s what we want to do. This is the solution that we’re looking for. And so, of course, you have to take in that information and then hopefully you walk them back a bit to find out how much of that information is relevant, accurate, and specific to the problem, what the real problem is, etc.

I think being consultative means that you take that part of the function and give it the most emphasis, meaning whatever comes next in the iterative design and ultimately the development and deployment of the solution, whatever it winds up looking like, its value is eventually going to come from how much work happened and how many questions and how they got asked and who got asked and who was thought to be included in that process from the get-go.

And if you are, for example, a small business owner and you recognize that you have a problem that you think maybe an L&D solution is a fit for that. You reach out to a consultant; I think you expect the consultant to help you get to the bottom of it. What is the true situation here? What are the pieces I’m missing? What am I too close to see? As a consultant, you have practiced helping those that are close to a problem better understand the wider ramifications of what they’re dealing with.

11:24-The Importance of Consultative Skills

Nolan: I do think that is the role of consulting and the purpose behind it. Most important thing for a lot of people to understand is whether you have the word consulting in your title or not. I think where the world is headed and where the companies are headed; they will value that consulting skill more than ever. Because, as you said, you’re still not going to a widget. You’re still not going to pull up a dashboard that says press the red button instead of the green. Somebody still has to go in there and analyze and talk to people and get to why are we pushing a button in the first place? And should we be pushing a red button or designing a green button or what is the cost of the red button, the cost of the green button?

It’s not meant just for the McKinsey’s of the world, right? You don’t have to make 500 an hour to be a consultant. The role of consulting in L&D is actually the most critical role, I feel, in L&D because you have, it’s such a hard, hard job in learning and development. I’m in marketing and I say marketing is a pretty simple job. You figure out who’s buying from whatever you have to buy, and you design an ad that fits for them, but you can design an ad that fits for that person. If I’m selling shaving cream, I’m going to target males 18 to 25. If it’s a low cost and if it’s a high cost, maybe I’ll go a little bit higher.

My ads appeal roughly to that, and I get to choose which platform. If I show that ad during a small game, it’s going to be these people. If I show it during, a Jeopardy, it’s going to probably show a little bit of an older audience as an example, but I get to target it based of who I’m wanting. You have to be the guy for everything for guy and gal for everyone. If somebody brings you into a project on sales, you need to have that consultative hat and be able to get the why behind the why for them. Same with leadership, same with sales or finance operations. So, you really are at the job of the L&D person. I think at the heart of them should be, I am a consultative person first and foremost that happens to be using L&D as my way to solve these problems.

14:24-Connecting Learning Solutions to Business Problems

James: Yeah, solving business issues with learning solutions. It’s definitely been a mantra for me for many, many, many years because fundamentally what you are doing is solving a business problem. In the end, it doesn’t matter what the solution is or what form it takes or what tool got used to make it or even how it works. Really, the only thing in my mind that matters is the business problem that you were dealing with before you implemented this solution on its way to being taken care of.

Has it been eliminated or is it slowly working its way out of your system? Soft skills and working with SMEs, those are two topics that I feel like I’ve seen more traction from in recent years, recent months even, on platforms like LinkedIn where L&D specialists are trying to connect to a wider audience. And I love that.

In fact, if you go to my LinkedIn profile, the banner behind me reads people first, tools second. It’s like my, where I live, my wheelhouse. And that’s because in business, as we said, whether you’re building widgets or something else, or making red buttons or something else, it’s always about the people that are engaged in the development of whatever that company’s product is or the services that they’re offering.

So, I think I have learned the value of building those relationships, establishing genuine and authentic connections with the people for whom I’m working and making it clear to them that I’m not approaching their problem from the point of an outsider that doesn’t feel in any way connected to their problem. It’s like, if you bring me in to help you to consult on your problem, I am now part of your team. I am someone invested heavily in not just what you brought me in to do, but also the workings and the ultimate success of your business.

Nolan: You mentioned solving the business problem and for those that have listened to my podcast, that’s probably what I talk about more than anything, which is kind of that reliance on solving that business need. And I think you might agree with me, James, that you really always have to have a foundational point and whatever tool you want to use to get there.

I think it was Honda who do the five ‘Whys.’ You asked why five times over Toyota? One of these companies said somebody brings you a problem. I want to create sales training. You have to ask them why five times. Fifth one will tell you what the actual, you know, and every time you ask, you actually are getting to the heart of the issue.

I believe that establishing a connection with business is crucial, particularly in light of the current financial challenges. And if you’re not able to connect it to business, you’re not helping yourself nor whoever you’re partnered with on the other side to say, this has the ability to have an enormous impact if we do it right, whatever that training should be.

17:31-Overcoming Resistance in Consulting

Nolan: I think we’ve talked about that a lot, James, of how do we get people to open up and I don’t know if it’s in L&D, but it’s our business that we’re working with, saying, okay, I’m willing to do this, but tell me why and what are the metrics that you care about? Why do you think it’s so difficult to get there as consultants? As we start digging in and as we start trying to get to the business reason why there is a pushback, what is it that’s making that job harder than maybe it should be?

James: Well, first I’ll just say there is pushback; there is resistance. It’s the reason why the five, it’s the reason for the five ‘Whys.’ I will also say that I feel fortunate that long before, I was a relatively new entrepreneur; I’ve only been sort of steering my own ship, as it were for about two and a half years, though I’ve been working in the industry in a variety of roles for 20 years.

About 15 years ago, I had the fortunate opportunity to work with a brilliant director of learning who recognized the importance of using the same success measurements as the rest of the business for learning to gain a position in the business. So, we couldn’t go in and expect them to appreciate what learning created. Solutions, no matter how neat they looked or what form they took or how easily accessible they could be, were to people in the company, didn’t matter to them. What they were looking at was the bottom line. What they were looking at was cost savings. What they were looking at was increased efficiency. We needed to be able to demonstrate that

20:15-Understanding the Client’s Perspective

James: Very early on, I learned that no one cares what you do. They only care if including you in the conversation makes their world better, their bottom line better, or their costs lower. They are interested in understanding the practical implications.

When you think about someone coming up in learning and development or learning to be an instructional designer, they talk about the tools they need, the solutions they build, and the methodologies. But that’s not in there anywhere. Someone could come out of that growth process, walk into a room, and expect everyone to be happy to listen. And when they realize the meeting’s over and they never even got to talk, they’re like, what happened? What is going on?

I thought I was here to do a job, and no one seems to care that I’m in the room. The answer is you need to find out what’s valuable to your customer and become that however you can. For me, the first thing happening while I’m listening to somebody walk me through their situation is that I’m not just listening to the details of the problem they want me to hear. I’m listening to who told them what they’re telling me, how long this has been going on, and whether any other solutions have been tried.

These factors aid in constructing a picture of this individual’s position within the company, their interactions with other business units, and the circumstances that have precipitated this situation. You can be damn sure, pardon my French, that it’s not because someone passionate about learning and development stood up and said, this is what we need to do. That isn’t what happens.

Whether it’s sales training or creating a technical manual, your job as a consultant is to get into the head and role of the person most directly impacted by the solution under consideration. You need to be able to say to a CEO, the first time you’re talking about his company, that you wonder if the person on the factory floor has done X or Y for them in the past year. You have to get that specific, that fast. You have to guess, figure out, and intuit the kinds of problems they are really dealing with—and sound like you get it long before you do.

22:30-Understanding the Problem Before the Solution

Nolan: Yeah, I agree. What I found is that because of the type of person I am, it’s easy for me to understand a number. It’s a pretty common language, and there’s not a lot of room for interpretation. That’s always where I try to start. Whatever the problem is—leadership, for example—how do you know? Like you said, where’s the source? How do you know you have a leadership problem? Help me understand. Or a customer service issue—how do you know? My net promoter score is down. Okay, what are they rating you low on?

We had a great client in Seattle, and we were doing call center training. They said, “We want to do better.” I asked, “What is better?” They said, “We just want better metrics.” So, I asked, “What metrics do you care about the most?” If I were an internet service provider, the key metrics from call centers would likely be how quickly I solved the problem and if I solved it right the first time—first call resolution and talk time. You’d want the lowest talk time and the highest first call resolution.

However, if I am Nordstrom, I might want to talk for a long time. I might not even care about talk time. I just want to know—did this person buy from us within the next 60 days, or whatever the key metric is? If you can get to that number, like you mentioned, what is the source of the pinch in your shoe that’s making you want to buy a new one?

If I don’t really know, the classic response is, “We need to do more onboarding.” Well, this stuff’s kind of old. We’ve all heard it. But what is the cost of that? More importantly, is it wrong?

James: Right, yeah. Like, don’t start with how old it is; start with whether old equals wrong, right?

Nolan: Right, I think most people are willing to, and you don’t have to know the metric or what’s important to them. You can Google it—it’s mostly the same. Most people measure the same thing. But starting a conversation with “How do you know we’ve done a good job?” is one of my favorites. What do you expect to see?

James: What’s the measure of success? Asking this early in the process helps frame a better sense of where we’re going. People get myopic. They want to know what the solution will look like before they even know what it should be. Different parameters soak up all their attention.

Nolan: If you ask my partner, she will tell you I have the frustrating habit of trying to solve the solution before I fully know what the problem is. I’m very much a victim of that, but that is the absolute worst thing you can do. You close the apparatus before focusing on what the problem really is.

Nolan: We had a client who wanted to create brand training. They were changing the culture of the company and said, “Hey, we’ve already built the training program. It’s going to be these assets. You just have to tell us what it will cost to make them.”

We asked, “Are you sure?” They said, “Yeah, okay.” So, we gave them the cost. They came back and said no. We reflected on why—if it was so important, what happened? We realized they had budgeted eight hours of brand training per person every year. The company balked and said, “I can’t spend a whole day just on that. I need more.”

26:37-Navigating Stubborn Clients

Nolan: And so it really made me stop and realize, sometimes when I jump to the solution of what would be great as a two-day eLearning, a one-day ILT, whatever it is, I don’t stop and, as you said, understand this person’s world and the scope and scale of the problem I’m trying to solve. If you jump right into solving that problem, you’re going to give somebody a giraffe when they wanted a zebra. That is so important.

The themes I’m getting are take it slow and be a listener—you have two ears and one mouth, so listen a lot before you start presenting the solution. Frame your solution on something tangible. You really have to know the problem first. The best summary is that before you create the solution, if you don’t truly understand the problem and can’t confidently explain what it is, why they are solving it today, and what happens if they don’t;, it’s hard to create a solution.

Now, James, although we do our best, even the best consultants like you and others still sometimes fail. What do you do when you have somebody who is so stubborn that you can’t seem to get through or get what you need from them? Because we know that happens. We have the best-laid plans, all these cool tools and tricks up our sleeves, but what do you do when you just can’t get to the bottom of it?

James: That’s a great question. It is absolutely true. It would be a disservice to anyone listening to think that just doing these things will work exactly. The reality is that depending on who they are personally and the role they have in a company, it has a huge impact on how things get started. You have to adapt accordingly. You have to speak to them and work with them in a way that aligns with their expectations, how they want to be worked with, and what they expect from you.

You have to find a way to thread into the conversation those things that aren’t their ideas. You need to do it in a way that helps them see it as their idea. There are many things at play that you need to be comfortable doing. You have to put your ego way in the back.

30:17-The Importance of Listening

James: And as someone who has led a team of instructional designers and had to transition from doing these things instinctively through learned practice to helping others navigate them, I’ve thought of things to tell them. One of them goes to something you said a moment ago—listen.

Don’t be afraid when you’re talking to someone who has something to say to let them say everything, then listen more, and then listen again. Let them run themselves out. If you don’t, anything you bring up may immediately be met with reasons why that isn’t the problem because they feel like they haven’t said everything they need to.

Don’t be afraid to set up another meeting just to let it all come out. There’s psychology in helping someone get to the point where they’re ready to listen and answer questions. That isn’t possible if someone has scheduled a 20-minute call just to give marching orders and expects an estimate on time and cost. You must adapt to this situation and adjust your roll with that and set expectations accordingly.

What do you do when things go wrong? When don’t you get the response, you’re hoping for? For me, I start thinking about their bottom line. As you said, what means the most to them? I never assume the thing they’re asking me to do is their top priority. There are often far more important things than me or this project.

I try to engage them on topics more closely aligned with their bigger concerns. I approach this in a manner that implies a relationship, posing questions and establishing a boundary between the current conversation and the one we require. Gradually, I introduce the idea that the complexity in their business and all its important details could trickle down and impact this project. Their time and money are valuable, and we want to ensure this project aligns with their needs. It’s a conversational evolution. But you need to be prepared to bring information that shows you understand them.

32:53-Common Pitfalls in Consulting

Nolan: I think one of the things that’s taught me, like you said, is if you can envision what their bottom line is and understand what your bottom line is as well. Making sure you set that expectation of this is what I’m here to do, this is what I need, this is what I’m hoping to get—at least in your own mind. Play it out in your mind: I might be asking for all these things, but at the very minimum, I need these three. Maybe you go in hoping to get answers to your top 10 questions, but you know you can get by with three and see how the conversation goes.

There is a lot to role play, even if it’s in your mind. Starbucks, I don’t know if they still do this, but in their barista training, they would have them write down on a blank sheet of paper: You’ve messed up an order, and somebody comes in screaming at you, demanding a refund. Write down what you would do. They recognized that this provided individuals with the opportunity to pause and detach from the situation, allowing them to reflect, in a calm and composed manner, on what their best self would do in the absence of any mistakes or distractions. Then, review that statement weekly so that when I do make an error, I am already aware of my default response: “I sincerely apologize; I will remake that at no charge.” Then, read that once a week so that when I do mess up, I already know my default response: “I’m so sorry, I’ll remake that for free. I hope that makes it up to you.” That makes the situation a lot less scary because you’ve already gone through it in your mind.

With SME time, it’s always been tough to get. When you’re consulting, by the nature of that, you’re usually dealing with a subject matter expert or a client. More than likely, that person is your client in this regard. Spending an extra 15-minute jotting down what you want to take out of that conversation versus just opening up the call and saying, “Hey, we’re doing sales training. What do you want to learn?” isn’t going to take you down the right path. One of the big keys is being prepared—knowing the questions you want to ask.

We’ve talked a lot about great things. What are some of the pitfalls, the traps we find ourselves getting into when we’re trying to be consultative, but it doesn’t come out the way we want? What are some common errors we all make?

32:53-Common Pitfalls in Consulting (continued)

James: I would like to say that one preventable pitfall is on us as consultants or anyone working in L&D. That is akin to what we were saying earlier about methodology, jargon, tools, and tricks up our sleeve. It’s easy to become enamored with those and lean on them.

Another pitfall that can sneak up on us is if you’ve just come off a project where your pinpointing of the actual problem led to a groundbreaking improvement. You can’t walk into your next meeting expecting to do that again. When listening, you have to clock what facts are important to understanding the project’s direction. Listen for logic holes. If two facts are presented as correlated and you don’t see the connection, ask, “Walk me through how these relate.”

You have to be like a sponge. Leave the rest of your day at the door. Walk in prepared to give them your full attention. This is my most important meeting today. Also, leave behind preconceptions about where this might go. Don’t get attached to a type of solution or problem. Be slippery as an eel.

That is challenging when we work in environments where we’re associated with what we do. Like you said, I tend to lean in and try to solve problems before I fully understand the scope. It’s a personality thing for me. I spent years priding myself on this field, thinking, “This is a perfect fit. I’m a problem solver.” I took pride in solving problems. In certain situations, my intense focus on problem-solving led me to overlook potential solutions, alternative routes, and different scenarios, putting me at a disadvantage foot in some circumstances because I was so focused on finding the problem that I missed solutions, alternate routes, and different scenarios. It’s like having a hammer and seeing only nails—that’s a danger.

It’s similar to another pitfall. The second you feel you know it all is the second you find out you don’t. I tell younger consultants, “Even if you do know it all.”

Nolan: Nobody likes to know it all, and you have to be open to not knowing it all. You have to be willing to bring in people who might know more than you. In consulting, when you’re in L&D, it can be a lonely role. You have many different clients every day—sales, the CFO, the CEO, whoever it is. Never be afraid to bring in a second voice.

We talked about overcoming the person who says, “I’m not giving it up to you.” Sometimes they’re just not willing to listen. Right or wrong, it’s the reality, and reality is all that matters. When I started consulting young, I realized I could do the questioning and analysis, but if I tried to present a solution, nobody took me seriously. I lacked the necessary experience to appear knowledgeable. Even if my solution was solid, they wouldn’t buy it.

You need to understand, as you mentioned, that you have bias coming in. A pitfall is assuming the person you’re talking to doesn’t have their own biases. You’re not Superwoman or Superman. Your role is not to overcome their unconscious bias, but to complete the task at hand. If that means bringing in someone senior just to sit on the call and listen, then that’s what you do.

So, we covered the pitfalls. We’ve talked throughout this about why consultancy is important in L&D, being the linchpin between different parts of the business. We’ve talked about some of the pitfalls you and I have fallen victim to.

38:14-Measuring Success in Consulting

Nolan: And maybe as we leave, James, we can talk quickly—when you’re doing consulting well, how does a company know that? How do you know? How do you say, “Yeah, I did a great job there”? How do we know we’ve done our job as a good consultant?

James: Well, I’m going to tie together some positive metrics from the solution standpoint and also talk about the relationship metrics from a personal standpoint. If you have assisted your client in spending money and developing a solution that best meets their needs at that moment, and you have diligently defined the criteria for effective transfer, positive change, and an actual outcome that surpasses where you started, you can cite these factors—as long as everyone agrees that this was the correct measure all along.

Are they going to call you again? Is that success? If they have a successful outcome, there’s a good chance they’ll call you again because they trust you and the process. But other factors matter too. I found this whether I was working in a business with multiple sub-areas and different people. As you mentioned earlier, it’s lonely. You go from point A to point B, meet with seven people in a day, and come back to your desk for the first time at 4:30.

The first indication of success I found was when someone would call my boss and say, “We have a project, we’re not sure what it needs to be, and we want James to help us figure it out.” It might even be outside our area, overlapping with other business units, and they just want me on that team. That, to me, indicates they recognize not just my skill in L&D but also my ability to help them understand their business. They want me in the room.

One of the neat things LinkedIn Premium lets you do with your profile—my primary method of communicating to the world—is move feedback and recommendations higher on your profile. I have amazing feedback from people talking about what it was like to work with me and what I helped them solve outside the traditional L&D learning solution. I want my customers and potential customers to see that. It doesn’t matter what I say about myself. If other people have had the kind of experience with me that you’re looking for, and you know you can get that from me, then that’s a measure of success many who focus solely on solutions and metrics might miss.

Nolan: Totally. I’ll answer quickly because I know we’re keeping you late, James. My answer to that is how you know you’re doing a good job. We measure internally at Infopro Learning by how many Brandon Hall awards we win. At the start of every project, we tell our clients, “Our goal is to win a Brandon Hall gold medal.” We do the consulting work ahead of time, knowing that’s our standard.

Everything you said is absolutely correct. More business and other metrics are important, but we’ve found this approach serves everyone’s needs. It creates a shared goal. We know we’ve done a good job when the client is willing to approve the work and when it gets recognized. At the end of the day, Infopro and the client together create a meaningful performance impact. It may seem superficial or even silly, but it’s a great way to bring our client along this journey. There’s an award system that measures how well you’ve done against your peers, and we want to be at the top. It captures everything for us. So that’s a simple, maybe cheesy, answer to the question.

James: Well, I love that answer. It has the advantage of a third party, a neutral authority in the field, and the awards are being competed for by your client and their peer clients. The big corporations are all seeing each other wait to see who wins. There’s also the ego boost that comes with being acknowledged as above the competition. Anything that helps get everybody’s head in the game, whatever that looks like, is a great thing. I know you guys cleaned up last year—kudos to you. Five gold Brandon Hall awards and a slew of other awards as well. Really impressive!

Nolan: Thank you. Yeah, that’s a big feather in our cap. Thank you for that, James. And thank you for spending the time with us. Please do go check out James Gilchrist on LinkedIn, as he already mentioned.

44:01-Outro

Nolan: That’s his number one area where he pushes out a lot of his great content, and his company is Lighthouse L&D Consulting. We’ll make sure all the information is in the podcast details. Thanks, James, for coming on and sharing your wisdom with our guests on a topic I love.